


Last Place You Look

by thingswithwings



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: BDSM, Bruises, Closeted, Community: kink_bingo, Dildos, Hickeys, M/M, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-17
Updated: 2008-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 03:34:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/258496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardcore BDSM, that's easy.  Hickeys, though.  Hickeys are hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Place You Look

It doesn't make any logical sense. No one's going to bother to distinguish a suck mark from any of the other bruises that Rodney wears pretty much all the time; even if they did, no one's going to ask who put it there. There's no harm in a little bruise on the collarbone, teethmarks on the nape of the neck: there's no way to prove that those marks – those _hypothetical_ marks – were made by a man, or by Sheppard. No one's going to approach a hickey on Rodney's chest with a dental cast of Sheppard's teeth and attempt to match them up.

But so it goes: Sheppard doesn't suck him (except his dick) or bite him (except lightly, tenderly, on his back or his ass, before he fucks him). And the one time that Rodney got too enthusiastic with tongue and lips and teeth against the flushed yielding skin of John's neck – well. John doesn't give hickeys, and he sure as hell doesn't sit still to receive them.

Rodney categorizes this behaviour in his mind with Sheppard's ridiculous insistence on leaving in the middle of the night (Atlantis is a 28-hour operation, so there are as many people around then as there are in the morning), his careful construction of alibis for all the time they spend together ("We were, oh god, we were playing chess," gasped between thrusts), and the hard, domineering way that he kisses.

Closet case, Rodney decides, dismissively, and lets it go. He's worked for the military long enough to be used to it, long enough to even see its necessity. Like any other high-stress, no-escape situation: if you're not safe, you make yourself feel safe. John doesn't like marking: his stupid rule about it doesn't do shit to protect him, but if it makes him feel secure enough to keep coming to Rodney's quarters at night, to keep running his hands over Rodney's body in that rough, hungry way, then Rodney's not complaining.

It's not until after they endure the ritual pummeling (or, as Ronon calls it, the 'track and field picnic') on M3C-3C6 that Rodney is forced to reevaluate his assumption.

"You went down pretty hard during the jousting," Sheppard intones, peeling Rodney's shirt off slowly.

"Yeah, well, it was – " he breaks off to kiss Sheppard's mouth, wet and messy – " _jousting_ , what do you expect? I don't know how Ronon even convinced me to . . . to . . ."

He has to stop talking, then, because John's got his arms trapped in his shirtsleeves, which are pulled down to his elbows; John's got his arms pinned, and is leaning in, fascinated, leaning in to put his mouth against the big, angry bruise on Rodney's ribs. Rodney's breath hitches; he keeps his gaze on Sheppard's lips. Sheppard looks up, and meets his eyes, and. Sucks.

Rodney's watched John suck him from this angle dozens of times, but it's never felt this intimate: John's tongue flattens against the skin just below Rodney's pectoral muscle, laving wet against the vivid purple mark, and pulls the flesh into his mouth, grazing it hard against his teeth. It hurts. Stings. Rodney doesn't stop him, though; just watches as he sucks the mark, almost lovingly, as he nips at it and drags his teeth across it and sucks it and sucks it.

"You, uh," Rodney manages eventually, after John's slipped his eyes closed. He's seen Sheppard get lost like that before, when he's sucking Rodney's cock.

He pulls off with a last, wet suck, then smiles up at Rodney like it's all business as usual. "Freebie," John says, as if that makes any sense.

"Okay," Rodney says faintly.

John shimmies down the bed and assumes the more usual sucking position. But even while he's got his mouth wrapped around Rodney's cock, even while his tongue is slurping over the head, John runs one long-fingered hand slowly up Rodney's side. His index finger first, and then his thumb, find the mark unerringly and push in, making it hurt, breaking more blood vessels, deepening the bruise. It aches, and Rodney squirms, and fucks up helplessly into John's mouth, jamming his eyes shut.

-

It's bizarre and inexplicable, but then, those two words can be used to describe most sex with Sheppard, not to mention most of Rodney's day to day life, most offworld missions, and most of the cafeteria food on Atlantis. So it's not too strange that the weird bruise-sucking slips his mind; what with all the fisting and the light to moderate bondage and that one time John pressed him up against the cool shower tile and gave him an enema, it's not particularly memorable.

So Rodney doesn't think of the incident when John pauses behind him, when John stops moving even though Rodney's got his pants off and his knees spread and is pretty much ready for the cock.

"What?" Rodney snaps irritably.

John shifts forward on the bed, bringing one knee between Rodney's legs – that's better – and curling his body sinuously along Rodney's back. Two fingers run down Rodney's neck, then tug the collar of his t-shirt aside.

"How'd you get this?" Rodney's momentarily confused: how'd he get the _t-shirt_? Then he feels the tender pain as Sheppard's fingertips graze the spot just above his shoulderblade. Oh. That.

The last time with the other bruise comes back to him, then, and his voice shakes a little when he says, "The mission. I got hit from behind. You were there."

"That was two days ago." John's breath is warm and moist against Rodney's shoulder. "You didn't have it yesterday."

"It's – deep. Came up in the night," Rodney says, still explaining even though John's obviously past caring, even though John's already got his mouth on it, is already biting at it and sucking at it like it's a gift that Rodney brought just for him.

"Jesus. John. Fuck, just," Rodney pants, bites his lip a minute, "just, c'mon, fuck me already – "

John doesn't take his mouth off of Rodney's shoulderblade, but he shifts his hips and gets one hand down between them and guides himself into Rodney, hot and slick and easy. Rodney shoves back, and John sucks _hard_ , drawing out that pleasure-pain until Rodney's arms start to shake.

-

"Can I do yours?" Rodney asks one night, in the dark, the city lights coming in blue through the window. Sheppard might be asleep. But his torso is dotted with little marks, some old and yellowing, some new and vivid: a map telling who he is, what he does, how he lives. Rodney trails his finger between two matching patches of mottled skin, trying to remember when Sheppard got hit with something blunt and two-pronged. He pushes a finger into one of them.

"Yeah." John's not asleep, but his voice is sleep-roughened. "Yeah, sure."

It's not really a sex thing – they had sex already, and neither of them is young enough, or has enough spare energy, that a second round is really desirable, even when it's possible. But Rodney shuffles down the bed a little and puts his mouth first to one mark, and then to the other, sucking hard, bringing them up bright red where they'd already started to fade. _From the planet with those weird horned beast things,_ he thinks, _or maybe just from sparring with Teyla with the sticks_.

John shifts beneath him, and his big hands come up to knead at Rodney's shoulders. He moans the way he does sometimes when Rodney's rimming him, low and stuttering on an exhalation of breath. Rodney presses the flat of his tongue against the bruise, and closes his eyes, and sucks a little harder.

He does that for a few minutes, then licks once, slowly, over each of them.

"Freebie," John mutters, running his hands sleepily over Rodney's neck and through his hair as he comes back up to lie next to him on the pillow. Rodney smiles, unsure.

"Set the alarm for three," John says, then falls asleep, trusting Rodney to get him out of the room in the middle of the night.

-

"You like it when I do this, right?" John asks, weeks later, pressing his thumb into a little purple oval on Rodney's bicep. It's not like him to ask, so Rodney takes his attention off of humping his dick against John's hairy thigh to look him in the face. Sheppard looks honestly unsure.

"Yes," Rodney says slowly, the way he would to a child or an anthropologist. John covers the head of Rodney's dick with the flat of his palm and starts rubbing absently.

"Cause you're usually kind of a baby about pain," John says.

"I am not a – oh, ow, _ow_ , stop that!"

John raises an eyebrow and stops twisting Rodney's nipple. "My point."

"Well, if you're going to use the same moves on me in bed that my sister used to use to get me to stop playing the piano, what do you expect."

"Heh. Jeannie's awesome." John rubs the pad of his thumb gently against the nipple he's just abused.

"Okay, no more talk about my family while we're having sex."

John goes on absently palming the head of Rodney's cock, pressed up snugly against his thigh, and keeps thumbing over Rodney's nipple. It's nice.

"So, you like it," John asks again, after a minute.

"Yes, yes, I like the . . . sucking." Rodney sighs and thrusts a little against John's hand. John squirms enough to get his mouth on the little bruise, catching it between his teeth before sucking it gently.

"Unnhh," Rodney adds, coherently. "Um. Though you're always welcome to, you know. Suck more traditional things."

Sheppard looks up, clearly puzzled. "I suck your dick _all the time_ , Rodney," he says, like an exasperated fifteen year old who's been asked to clean his room. Rodney rolls his eyes.

"No, I meant – " he nudges John east.

"Oh, you like having your nipples sucked?" John shrugs equitably. "I didn't know if you were into that or not."

Just last week, Rodney shoved a glass dildo in John's ass, tied his hands behind his back, and fucked his mouth.

John touches his tongue tentatively to Rodney's nipple.

-

Rodney's not dumb enough to try to get himself injured (no sexual fetish is worth potential damage to his brain) but when it does happen, when he trips over a root or when the local kids throw rocks at them or when he forgets where they parked their invisible spaceship and walks right into it – when those things happen, he finds himself standing in front of the mirror afterwards, poking at tender places on his arms and chest, forcing the marks to bloom up under his skin so that he can present them to Sheppard later, innocently: so that he can offer them up, since he doesn't know what else to give.

-

Sheppard manages to get himself shot on a mission to an uninhabited planet, which is probably a new record in pathetic. It's not like they were expecting the weird post-Kolya Genii splinter cell guys to show up there – it wasn't a particularly nice uninhabited planet, even – but John seems kind of embarrassed about it all the same.

Luckily, he was wearing his tac vest at the time, and the cheap soft-metal Genii bullets didn't pierce the kevlar.

"That's gonna bruise like hell," is the first thing that Rodney blurts out when they all go to visit him in the infirmary. Ronon and Teyla and Jennifer and Jennifer's assistant whassername are all standing around the bed. Sheppard stares at him like he's completely lost his mind, but only for a minute; only until he realises that it's their secret, their language; only until he hears the promise that Rodney is making to put his lips against the angry spreading mark on John's chest and make it his own.

"Yeah," John says slowly. "I guess it is."

-

John doesn't ever stop leaving in the middle of the night, and he keeps on kissing hard, like he's struggling for dominance, just like all the other military guys Rodney's fucked who were ashamed or afraid or some combination of the two. But Rodney should've known that John is seldom motivated by shame or fear; that he kisses hard because he likes kissing hard; that he does what he's always done to make himself – to make them – feel safe. Rodney should've known – because really he knew a long time ago – that they're in this together.

One night, after he's worked the glass dildo all the way up into Rodney's ass, once he's got Rodney on his knees and tied securely to the wall behind the bed, John goes a little quiet, and he slips his thumb down Rodney's neck, grazing his skin, to rest against the little bruise on Rodney's shoulder that he's been nursing for the past week or so.

"Close up around me," John says, shoving his cock between Rodney's thighs and rubbing back and forth. Rodney does. John's dick is hot and wet, pushing against his balls on every stroke.

Sheppard's thumb keeps rubbing, almost gently, over the bruise. "I like this one," he says. His thumbnail is a little too long, so when he finally pushes in it's sharp against Rodney's skin, a little half-moon of pain slightly more intense than the usual dull ache. He starts fucking between Rodney's thighs in earnest, breathing hot into Rodney's ear as he speaks. "I'm gonna keep this one around for a while."

"Hhhhnnngghhh hnnnnooood," Rodney says around the gag, safe and loved.


End file.
